Buying (or Creating) Training That’s Boring

Sales Training Mistakes: Buying (or Creating) Training That’s Boring

Boring sales training is never effective, so make sure you’re coming up with topics and ideas that appeal to your sales staff. You’re never going to get your time or money’s worth otherwise. If you want to get the maximum impact, talk to them about the one thing you know they are interested in – making more money.

• For those of us who were raised on classrooms with beige walls and long lectures, a stroll through a modern high school or university might come as something of a shock. In many parts of the country, textbooks are being supplemented – or even replaced – with software, video, and other training aids. What’s more, the material today’s young people are learning from isn’t littered with references to Dick and Jane, but real world applications of the issues they are studying.

It isn’t just technology that’s driving these changes; it’s the realization of something that’s simple yet profound: people need to be interested if they’re going to learn.

• Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s very hard to pay attention when you’re bored, and it’s very easy to be bored when the information is not put in an interesting way. Even so, companies will devote all kinds of time and money to sales training that resembles those old-style lectures. But as helpful as the tips and techniques might be to your producers, it’s never going to make any kind of impact if it isn’t engaging them and holding their focus.

There are lots of ways to make your training more interesting, and a few of them – like using technology, making it more interactive, and choosing the right time slots – will be recurring themes in these articles. But for the moment, I’m going to skip past all of that and mention a technique that’s pretty easy to put in play, but lots of sales managers forget about: make your training practical.

• Few salespeople want to spend a day learning about “Advanced CRM Retention Techniques,” or “Profit Forecast Utilization,” but I’ve never met a single producer who wasn’t interested in making more money. Show your sales staff that you’re going to present them with some practical, real-world ways to increase the size and frequency of their commission checks, and I guarantee you’re going to have a captivated audience.

In fact, making your training about profits doesn’t even usually mean changing topics, but simply framing them in the right context. Try to avoid heavy jargon: the best salespeople prefer simple language. Instead of “margin improvement,” teach them about “selling at higher prices.” Likewise, “maximize customer value” becomes “making more money off of your best clients.” Too many companies, and trainers, get so caught up in sounding professional that they forget to say what they really mean.

• Boring sales training is never effective, so make sure you’re coming up with topics and ideas that appeal to your sales staff, because you’re never going to get your time or money’s worth otherwise. If you want to get the maximum impact, talk to them about the one thing you know they are interested in – making more money.